


Cuckoo’s Egg

by thumbipeach



Category: Purple Hyacinth (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Enemies to Allies to Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Flower Symbolism, Fluff, Guns, I had to reread 43 for this, I’m the main attraction: the one trick pony, Kieran is useless with a gun hc going strong, Language of Flowers, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Office, Oops! I Did It Again, Pining, Pissed!Lauren, Post Season 1/season 2, Referencing all my fics like a madlad, Resolved Sexual Tension, SIMP!Kieran, SO, Sexual Tension, Simp Kieran Agenda also going strong, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Welcome to the circus, again what is new, bIRD SYMBOLISM??, basically Four and Twenty but more steamy and less good, but then it’s resolved I guess, but wait, everyone: they’re kissing in the archives??, i can only write like 3 things, i clowned myself, like??everyone here is stupid, literally every other fic is like this too, literally everybody has already done this, lmao yikes, me: yeah, please appreciate my sacrifice, they’re fools and I am too, what is new, yeah that too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:15:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thumbipeach/pseuds/thumbipeach
Summary: I’m not going to let you live here, let you infest my space with your rot.”“But you will, because you and I are one in the same.”“You’ll convince yourself of that.”“No. I’ll know.”—Cuckoo birds have this habit; they lay their eggs undetected in other birds’ nests, and those unsuspected plants are raised as the bird’s own.That is what happens here; except they are more alike than they think, this cuckoo and robin.They will make each other whole.(Or: Office shenaniganery, take 187)
Relationships: Kym Ladell/William Hawkes (background), Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 21
Kudos: 105





	Cuckoo’s Egg

**Author's Note:**

> Songs:
> 
> ‘Taking me Back’ by LANY (ultimate s2 song tbh)  
> ‘unsaid’ by flor  
> ‘hold on’ also by flor

Lauren’s father had once participated in a duel.

She remembers sitting on his lap, worn and tired from the day she and Dylan had spent chasing voles out of his father's tulip fields, and him regaling her of the tale.

He didn't remember what it was about—could've been over a woman, he'd said (she asked him if it was for mother, and he'd laughed and said no, a different woman at a different time)—but he still remembered the feeling of the small pistol in his hand, the sun beating down on him and his friend's faces, and the feeling of thrill, the immediate knowledge of one's own fragile mortality.

He'd told her that duels worked upon set rules: that there must be impartiality from the presiding referee, that the duelists must stand back to back, take the same number of steps away from each other, scuff the dirt, take what may be your last breaths. Then, on the count of exactly ten, turn and fire, concurrently.

She'd asked him, with a morbid childhood awe, if he'd killed his opponent that day. 

He'd laughed nervously, shifted her position on his lap, and said that no, he hadn't, that they'd both ended up missing, shooting into the thorny bushes beyond. Then, confronted with death for the first time in their young lives, they'd agreed to disagree on the matter at hand.

She was struck immediately with the allure of a duel of equals: the impartiality, the perfect ten paces, the simultaneous turn and shot, it all fascinated her so that even when her mother came into the room, shouting that dinner was ready and that if they didn't hurry up she’d eat it all herself, the image of her father—a peaceful man—firing a bullet into the roses, never left her.

It is ironic, then, that in a time ten years later, after she finally learnt how to really handle a pistol, the only remaining presence of her father being the rules he taught her, she takes one look at the meek, white dove of her ex-partner in crime and knows instantaneously that it will _not_ be that way, their final parting.

For he is not her equal, not anymore. 

No, he is a reigning monster in a domain of her own, he is someone who has built and secured and then broken and kept it that way, and she will rue the day she accepts that she is akin to him, that he deserves the courtesy of standing toe to toe, back to back, arm in arm and barrel to barrel with her.

He makes an imperceptible shift of his spectacles, clearing his throat and reaching out a hand, the same one that choked her the night before (damn him, he must _know)_ and introduces himself, and she breaks, cracks like a robin's egg—

"A pleasure to meet you, Officer Sinclair."

—but she keeps it to herself, holds the eggshell shards close to her chest, revealing nothing in the great game of illusions, of deceptive politeness masking the intent to do everything to him what he did to her, hurt him and burn him like a candle dripping in scented wax.

Kym is looking at her strangely, and she supposes it’s because she’s hesitated for too long, drowning the office in tense silence.

“Lauren?”

She snaps back, making a show of being abashed. Kym frowns, but says nothing to the effect. What can she say, anyway, that would stop the merciless slaughter that is about to happen, that is precipitant?

“My apologies, **I’m just tired, is all. It’s lovely to meet you as well, Mr. White.”**

“Please,” he says, and the sound of his voice does something to her she’d rather ignore, “Kieran.”

She nods, and the deal is set. She will kill him here.

But she will not be fair; it will not be a duel.

She will not stand back to back with him (never, ever, _ever_ again), she will not raise her weapon (so very different from his own), walk the ten steps (away from him, where she longs to be), wait for him to square his shoulders and only then turn.

No, she will shoot him in cold, broad daylight, because that is what he has done to her, and it is only fair, in the game of equals he has cheated in. 

(And which she did, too).

———

She first dances with the idea in the archive room only seconds after, the glint of her pistol soothing her blinding ache.

“What the hell.”

He doesn’t respond, although it angers her all the same, his continued silence.

“I said, what the _hell,_ assassin.”

“Was I supposed to answer?”

“I’d sure hope so; you have some explaining to do.”

“Don’t I now?”

Lauren snarls like a starved bear, pressing the barrel further into his temples. “You have some kind of goddamn nerve if you think I’m just going to let you in here.”

“I do have nerve, a considerable amount of it.” He’s doing it again, all arrogance and cocksure banter, but deep down she relishes the apprehension in his gaze, how his palms press up against the metal crates holding his deeds in their depths, desperate, almost pleading.

She doesn’t give him what he wants, because for all the world she is a sinner too.

“Forget it, then. Listen. This is how this will go: I will not talk to you. You will not talk to me. We’re done.”

Is it just her, or does he fade a little, pallor turning a white to match his deceptive name? 

No matter, she relishes in it all the same.

“Are we now, officer?”

“We are. And as for everyone else here—you never started. Don’t bother.”

And then, doing something she’d never actually thought she’d have the guts to, she pulls the trigger of her pistol, right next to his head.

Only a click, and nothing more.

His breath is caught, pupils dilated and eyes blown wide, like a wolf that’s been deprived of its kill, a bird struck with a spasm of feathers mid-flight. She smirks, her eyes glinting devilishly, and leaves him to that fading horror, the one he’s had to contemplate more than once before—the knowledge that you are breakable—that as a human, you are not invincible.

Ah, but that’s the thing, isn’t it: he isn’t human.

———

Kym looks worried as she sits on top of her desk, shoving honey and toast with scraps of blackberry down her throat unwillingly, like she’s a hapless baby bird in need of force-feeding.

“Are you _sure_ there isn’t anything wrong?”

“ _Yes,_ Kym, why—”

“ _Because,_ Laur!” And she makes a subtle glance towards the hallway that leads towards the archives. “Don’t think I can’t see—I’m not as blind as Lila is without her glasses.”

Lauren’s heart drops. Of course, of course, because she is no glass actor, a doll with no emotions. It must have been palpable, her hate of the infiltrator, of the false robin: for that is what he is, all he is to her now. 

“You look at him like he killed your damn cat! What is it, and do I have to do something about it?” She mimes, her hands pulled taut as if she’s wringing someone’s neck, and Lauren disguises the pang that the motion brings, the fact that it brings her back to a night of soaking rain and cold, blue eyes of one she thought she knew with a swift jab at Kym’s arm, honey dripping from the slice of bread and onto her sleeves.

"Kym, I—well, quite honestly, it's because I knew him."

" _Did_ you?"

"Yes—ah, at least—I thought I did.” She looks down at her pants, scuffed with pale grey dust. **“He...well, we dated, briefly."**

" _No."_ She looks again towards the archives. " _Him?! Seriously??"_

“Please don’t go airing it about—it’s embarrassing, really.” Lauren scratches the back of her neck to hide the tremor of her hands, the bruises feeling like shards of eggshell, too far gone from her tight grasp on them. She’s let it get away from her. 

“I see. What happened? Did he call your eyes pensive? Was that it?”

“I...no. That’s the thing.” And she looks away when he walks in, suspenders buckled and hands not shaken, not bleeding hyacinth stems.

“He was the one person who didn’t.”

———

He’s not going to get out of this alive.

He knows this; it was an ultimatum anyhow. Lune is dead in spirit but in order for the plague doctor to leave his bedside of hyacinths he has to let it die in truth as well, has to destroy what he had worked to build, with brick and mortar and the help of another.

And she, too. But he made himself a promise, one she won’t hear; he wouldn’t touch her again.

What good does that do him now, when she is hellbent on taking him down?

He dries a hyacinth, wanting to press it into the file on Hanbury Street and let it seep into the parchment, but he doesn’t, merely throwing it with a careless fling into the wastebasket, where it will stay, stubborn, a thing immortalized in death as he is too. 

And then she is there; all red fury and white light.

“Getting antsy, Hyacinth?”

“Hardly, officer.”

Her pretty mouth turns upwards at the tips, and he does not like it; it is nothing like the soft cashmere of her grateful one.

Now, it is brittle and taunting, like his pressed flower, so carefully done. The process is time consuming, but he has done it; he has broken and desiccated and dried what he once lovingly plucked.

“I thought we had a deal?”

“Didn’t we?”

And he falls into the comforting rhythm of silent footsteps, a looming pace, and suddenly he’s in front of her, enough to smell the honey and the late linger of fresh flowers.

“I thought that we weren’t talking, officer. But here you are.”

She bristles, all thorn and vine, and then the smirk returns, and it unsettles him more than it should.

“Ah, but you broke a deal once too. I’m just,” and she bows, mockingly, “returning the favor.”

He stops short, ice flooding his veins, unbidden.

She makes a show of looking amongst the files, picking through them with her fingers, deceptively calm. He makes the mistake of allowing his pride to swallow him whole, and he turns his back on her, reaching for a metal case on the Camellia. 

Then he feels the press of her gun to his shoulder blades, and he wonders when he allowed that to become familiar to him.

“Don’t think for a moment—”

“I am not safe from you, am I?”

He does not dare turn, but he knows too well the graceful shake of her head. She is a fox in a cold den of hatred, of stale archive air, things of the past scribed in thin tomes. This is her territory, and he has set foot in it. The only logical solution is a duel, to settle their scores, but he has not handled a gun of his own in—since—

When has he, really? He uses swords and those alone because to do otherwise would be too loud, too noticeable, too telling.

“No. You’re not.” And she presses closer, close enough for him to feel the pressure of her chest on his back, disarmingly soft and tender. “And you know why, assassin dearest?”

“Why, _mon amour?”_

He can feel her snarl. 

“Because you can’t shoot me.”

That he can’t indeed.

“You don’t know how.”

He turns his head over his shoulder, and his eyes are that of the ocean’s child. “Don’t I?”

“I certainly will not teach you.”

Then she leaves. And he is alone.

No, that isn’t true; his victims are there too, immortalized not in dehydration and wax, but through dry descriptions of the things he’s lived, the events he’s crafted like oils on a string of canvas.

Ten paces. Back to back. She is right, as she always seems to be; he does not know how to shoot.

———

She will not be the mother bird, blinded by her love for her true children.

She will not take the intruder in her arms, she will not hold it close, feed it, nurture it until it rivals her.

She will toss him out of the nest of her life, watch him crack and bleed below on the cold, hard ground, and find victory in that one loss.

She will keep her friends close and him closer, so shooting him will be easier.

This, she vows.

Who exactly will uphold that promise, she has yet to figure out.

———

She walks into the office to find it swathed in ivory and cream.

Flowers of every kind—irises, carnations, poppies—damn, _blasted_ hyacinths—they deck the cubicles and dot the halls like fallen stars, and smell like an Ardhalis spring, warm and inviting. 

They’re all white.

White.

Lila looks delighted, Kym ecstatic, and even Lucas looks placated as he toys with a tulip stem absently.

“Did you see what your boyfriend did?” Kym beams. “Said he knows how to work with flowers—offered to do all this for the upcoming spring!” She throws a carnation in Will’s general direction, and it is a miracle that he manages to catch it before it hits his face.

_“Ladell.”_

_“Sorry,_ honey!”

Will looks on the verge of a stroke, but shakes his head violently and turns to Lauren with a mixture of appeal and concern.

“Nice of him, right?”

Lauren stands still for a couple seconds, clothed in a shower of thin petals. Then, she smiles disarmingly.

“Yes. Nice of him.”

Then she is back in the archive room, staring him down.

“White.”

“Sinclair.”

“ _Fuck—“_ and there is a gun once more, rose quartz set in deadly steel, a thing of old. “I’m going to kill you.”

He doesn’t say anything. What can he say?

_“Stop.”_

“Doing what?”

“Being human.”

_That_ does something to him, and doesn’t she love it? He stops, and looks as though she’s shot him straight through, even though the safety catch isn’t released yet. 

Yet.

“Officer—“

“No. Don’t pretend you like flowers, don’t pretend you’re nice, don’t _pretend—I_ know what you are. _I_ will be the one to out you.”

“Ah.” And finally his back loosens, almost in defeat. The blue of his eyes are darker than a robin’s egg, lighter than an abyss. They are caught in the middle, a thing of a starling, birds that are more horrific up close, when you isolate them from their groups. He is that: frightening in solidarity.

“Will you? When will that be?”

“When I’ve grown tired of watching you.”

He smiles, and it is too soft for her liking. It’s almost real.

“I can’t leave. Not until I’ve done my job.”

She grits her teeth. 

“I won’t allow it, assassin. _Hyacinth.”_

“Won’t you?”

“I’m not going to let you live here, infest my space with your rot.”

He laughs, and it is sour, like slices of bittergourd. “But you will, because you and I are one in the same.”

“You’ll convince yourself of that.”

“No.” And there it is, that glint that calls her to him. “I’ll know.”

She growls, and discharges her pistol. 

It hits the little lamp on his right, smoking with the acrid scent of hatred. He is frozen, a cornered hound in the henhouse, a cuckoo in a robin’s nest.

She leaves him before the office can come running at the stray gunshot, leaving him to explain his apparent inadequacy with a gun. Who knows, maybe she can get him away from the things for good, so he’ll never learn how to shoot back.

Back to back. Ten paces. Count—

No. She turns the moment she can feel his skin leave hers, and pulls the trigger close range.

She is not going down.

———

Will frowns. They’re in the supply closet, and too close for comfort.

“I’m telling you, something’s up.” His partner whispers, something she rarely does. 

“You think they’re—“

“I don’t know. But haven’t you seen them?” She frowns, hair sweeping over her face.

“Lauren doesn’t seem to like him.”

“My, Hawkes, you are dense.” She looks up at him through graceful lashes, and he doesn’t know what it’s doing to him. 

“I think they feel the same way for each other.”

“What?”

“They’re both bloodhounds. The way they look at each other—she knows him and he knows her, somehow.”

“Ah. Well—“

“—we’ll have to see who takes each other down first, no?”

———

He’s in the shooting range, adjacent to the room filled with his favored weapons, his strong knuckles pulled to white around a pistol.

He fingers the trigger tentatively, none of his usual confidence on his shoulders. He knows how to release the safety, yes, but when he points it feels wrong, like it should be someone else’s action, like he is a stranger to his own skin and movements.

He doesn’t like it.

He sets his stance, points his feet. Then he levels the gun.

“You’re too tense.”

He whirls to find his officer, all tucked black blouse and jaundiced smile. He raises an eyebrow at her, and she answers with a subtle click of the jaw, a twist of her wrist, like what she wants to say is being held in her by gunpoint.

Oh, but it is.

“Am I?”

She nods, face revealing nothing with the way the moonlight kisses it. 

“Then show me, officer?”

She cocks an eyebrow, shifting her weight on her legs. “Hm. I’m not a good teacher.”

“Try me.”

Then, she is in front of him, her own pistol grazing his stomach, auburn colliding with pale, cold blue. She smiles up at him, her lashes brushing her cheeks delicately, like yards of lace. He doesn’t—

She turns and fires with a bang.

It grazes his cheek, cutting him and barely missing his mouth as he ducks out of instinct. The bullet embeds itself into the target behind him.

“What the _hell—“_

_“Hope you were watching,”_ is all she says, and about turns, heels clicking on the wooden floorboards. He is left bereft once more, the phantom trails of her gun on his abdomen doing nothing to abate the adrenaline.

Back to back. Ten paces. Count to ten. 

She misses on purpose, but it is a warning like silence is to a storm.

She is a bad teacher indeed. 

———

He draws by candlelight. It’s inconvenient, but the melting wax casts shadows that assist him more than lamplight, and the scent of mint keeps him alert.

He sketches the sparrows in the square, outlining the curve of their little necks in grey lead.

He details the pot of hyacinths in the archive room, the pot worn and cracked but the flower strong still. He only wavers slightly when he reaches for the purple paint.

He tries hard to draw his new coworkers: the bubbly secretary, the brooding officer in the corner. The friends, the two that walk as if they were one but act for all the world like they would go miles to seperate.

But it fails; he comes back to her still.

Yellow. Red.

Gold. Crimson.

Robin’s breast and back.

Cuckoo’s grey and spots of milky white.

He’s tarnished her.

———

Hermann levels her with a sharp glare, and she hates it to her core. Is that what she looks like, looking at her intruder?

“You, Sinclair, are not setting _foot_ near the Carmine. I won’t allow it.”

“But—“

“If I dealt in all of your protests I’d have no job left. You’re banned from the patrol tonight. I won’t have you involved in this.” His jaw is set so hard it must be grinding his teeth to a pulp. Lauren wonders if it will have the same effect if she knocks them out with her heel.

She leaves before she indulges that urge, and immediately runs into _him._

He gathers the files under one arm and leans to whisper in her ear, lovingly.

_“No luck, then, officer?”_

Her hand snakes threateningly up to his throat, brushing over his jugular, and he snaps back. She smiles with no intent or warmth.

“No indeed, darling dearest.”

_“White!”_ Hermann calls from inside, impatient. “I need those—“

“Coming, sir!” He looks back down at her. She grips his collar and tugs it, hard, then pivots gracefully on her heel and strides down the hallway.

They move in opposite directions.

Back to back.

Toe to toe.

No, she is too far ahead.

Their referee is not impartial.

———

He takes Belladonna’s hand in his, and twirls her around the polished room.

“My, White. The office’s gotten you refined, hasn’t it?”

He wants to scream, but holds it to his chest and conceals it with a knife-sharp glint, a smirk with teeth and tongue. “Hardly, Davenport. You didn’t think I was refined before?”

She leans forward, her vanilla perfume cloying and consuming, forcing him to turn up at the nose. 

“No. You were always a little too ambitious for that.”

Her dress is a dark orange umber, corset laced to strain and dotted with black roses, and he is disgusted to find himself wishing her hair had more blood in it, her dress and face more life and her hand holding a revolver—

Ah.

“You seem distracted.”

He shakes his head. She grins wolfishly, the vixen smile she wears when she gets what she wants, which is often and always.

“I wasn’t talking about here and now.” 

She retreats with a toss of her hair, diamonds catching the light of the chandeliers above.

He’s only just dismissed her presence when another makes itself known to him. 

He’ll always know her, when the robin is where it shouldn’t be.

And she’s here. In the rafters, somewhere. Looking at him. He knows, he _knows._

Back to back.

Ten steps.

His gun has no magazine, and he can only manage the safety catch.

She’s an impatient thing; she turns and fires at seven.

Right into his heart.

———

  
  


She’s tucked into a dark corner of the Camellia’s vents, hand on her radio and brain filled with blood.

_He’s_ here, and it’s in his territory this time. His jaw catches the light of the hanging stained glass, his eyes scanning the room of assassins and thieves, looking for what she does not know. She watches him from the rafters, dancing in his black suit, swirling in a den of red and orange and white. 

White.

He’s walking outside when it’s all over, the night descending behind him, hands in his pockets and face impassive. She is drowned by rose bushes, canary yellow and thorny as her vices, and she tries to stifle her stray yelp as she’s pricked by one as she shadows him.

Then, when he’s at the entrance to the bridge where it all began, when he’s led her to the one place she can’t escape from because he’s there with her too, he about turns to face the empty night behind him.

“Lauren.” 

He calls her to him not with playful banter, not with allusions and threats and barely-there hints, but with a breathless whisper of her surname, the word catching and fluttering the wind.

She rises, throwing off her shrouded mantle. 

“You called, subordinate?”

Why did she call him that?! Why did she fall back, backward out of her nest into the careful waltz they once had, why does he accept it, welcome it, why does he allow himself to look like he does, hair wild and dappled in moonlight, face riddled with that _look—_

“You’ve been following me.”

She grins without happiness. “You knew?”

“Of course I did.” He steps closer, coat billowing behind him as the river rages on. “I always know.”

She can’t shoot him here, not in public. She has to play the waiting game, wait until they’re in private, just the two of them and his damage and her hatred, so she can press herself to him, toe to toe and legs to legs, as close as they can be, and she can puncture his heart straight through.

“Don’t you?”

“You are—” and he stops when he is inches from her, pupils dilated with something she doesn’t want to acknowledge, hand held up in front of them.

A yellow rose, thorns in his fingers.

“Lauren.”

“Kieran.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s a breath into the night, and she reels back as if he’s slapped her. It’s honest, it’s honest and real and he should stop looking at her like _that—_

**“I don’t care.”**

Then she is gone into the bushes once more. The stars stay behind with him, he, the devil.

Back to back. Ten paces. A count of the same. 

She turns, and hits his back. 

Blood pools from the wound, but he does not bend.

He never will, not until she does too.

She has let him in.

———

His stride is a mirror of last night on the deserted street, except this morning it is in the office he has sidled into and made his temporary sanctuary.

Without the presence of his officer the place is more of a labyrinth than an absolute end at the tip of her gun. He walks the dark hall to the archives, coat hanging on his elbow, the yellow rose from last night still held in its pocket’s grip.

_Get it done, Hyacinth._

_I will. You needn’t worry._

_Oh, but I am worried._

_Why?_

_Because of that look in your eye just then. You can’t hide from your doctor._

_You’re sick._

_So are you._

He’s about to disappear into the corner’s shadow when the sergeant comes down the hallway, coffee cup in hand and an ignorant smile on her joyful face.

“Kieran! Good morning.”

He bows slightly. “Good morning, Ms. Ladell.”

“ _Oh,_ look at you!” She falls into step with him, feet in time. “Trying to flatter me!” She shoves a twin cup of the bitter, burning liquid into his hands, and he fumbles with the china only briefly. 

“Call me Kym. Or Sergeant—that’ll boost my ego enough!”

“Noted, Sergeant.”

_Officer._

She turns to him, swiveling her head and regarding him like an owl would—suspicious and keen.

“I hope you know that you won’t be able to get to Lauren through me.” She crosses her arms and pouts, cocking her hip.

He hides a grimace underneath the lip of the mug. “No, that was not my intention.”

“Good.” She doesn’t face him, but something in her voice sets him on edge. She’s a blade, deceptively dull but sharp at the tip, where it really matters. 

“Lauren’s good, you know? I mean, I know she can be effortlessly stubborn—”

“I do know that well.” 

_I’m sorry._

_I don’t care._

“—but once you let her in she’s the greatest thing. And she’s talented, too.”

He nods. “I have no doubt of it.”

“You know—” she prattles on, passing the white flowers still in their holders. “—she caught up to the Purple Hyacinth not too long ago.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! First person to ever survive him, isn’t it impressive! And the first thing she does—analyzes the situation perfectly! Gets right back to work. Really,” she turns to him, heels scratching the wood. “She’s sharp, her.”

He can’t hide the smile. “I know.”

Kym waves a hand, white petals from the hyacinths above dripping onto her hair and over her eyes, hiding something he can’t place. “She even came up with the theory that the flowers were _apologies._ Don’t know why she’d think— _oh!”_

He’s coughing, spluttering, coffee caught in his throat. She makes to pound his back, but he retreats, sliding backwards with startling alacrity.

**“Ah. I apologize—burnt my tongue.”**

She still looks worried, searching. “Are you—?”

“Really, go on without me, Sergeant.” He smiles almost too easily. “I’ll go back and get another cup.”

She raises an eyebrow, but nods reluctantly and disappears with a mocking salute.

Once her figure recedes, the smile does too. He stands frozen in the hallway, coffee dripping off his sleeves. 

_No._

_Damn her. Damn that—_

His legs break into a run, and when he slams the metal door of the archive room he barely registers the noise over the ocean crashing over his ears. He grips the trolly handle enough to split it.

_No. No. No._

_How’d she—_

_She couldn’t._

He laughs, the bark harsh and clear, and grits his teeth like he’s swallowed a lemon. The rigid, icy feeling doesn’t leave.

Perhaps he wasn’t as careful as he’d thought. 

Perhaps he’s let her in, too. 

Onto the secret—that he’s a cuckoo in a false home.

Why’d he pick the one person who could see right through him?

Back to back. 

Back to back.

They don’t get farther than that.

———

He corners her, this time.

He lures her with a hyacinth, a discreet purple one underneath a gift of files, to taunt and rile her like he so loves, and the murderous _something_ in her gaze only laps at the flame. When she comes to him, she doesn’t have the upper hand anymore.

“What—“

“ _How.”_

She’s confused, though the draining hatred does not leave. 

He gestures to the hyacinth, clenched softly in her palm, a stark dichotomy of her emotions.

She doesn’t say anything.

“Why?”

She grits her teeth. “So they are, then.”

He scoffs, drawing closer like he did on the bridge, _both_ times now. But he is stormy, a thing of thunder and lightning, Lord Death himself. “You don’t—“

“Don’t what? Get to know?”

“ _Yes._ You don’t—you don’t care, after all.”

She scoffs. 

“How did you—”

_“I have no regrets.”_ She imitates him mockingly, like a parrot throwing his words back into his own mouth. He bristles.

“Bad of you to choose a partner you can’t hide anything from.”

He clenches his teeth so hard it’s a miracle they’re not worn. He backs her into the cabinet, and in an instant her gun is to his head. He has no counter, no gun of his own, so he uses his words.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“But you made it like this.”

“I am sorry. You believe _that,_ don’t you, my dearest polygraph?”

She scoffs, but the grip on her pistol slacks a bit. “You’re sincere. But I don’t know what I can do about it.”

“Don’t do anything about it.” He sighs. “I just want you to accept it.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t want anything?”

He shakes his head, and now her pistol drags lower, down his neck, brushing his exposed collarbones and stopping briefly where his heart beats.

“You should be the one asking things of me.”

**“I told you to leave me be.”**

“Liar. You’re a liar. That isn’t what you want.”

“Shut _up—_ you don’t get to say—you don’t get to say _anything.”_

“Don’t I?” Her gun presses and moves lower, his abdomen where she pressed it so long before, down until it drops by his leg, and there is no distance between them anymore but their own ghosts pressed up against each other like preserved flowers in the midst of books.

“ _Why?_ You knew—”

“I did know.”

“Then—?”

They stare at each other for minutes and minutes. Those minutes span heartbeats and toss the hyacinth petals down to the floor. Time does that; it burns and recreates in a flash.

Then, he takes the leap, and draws closer until the bridge is built, pressing his lips to hers. 

And to his surprise, she does not back down.

She growls into it, but still reaches up to grasp his shoulders, his biceps, pulling, pulling. He moves further, her jaw in his hands and back up against the metal. She drops the hyacinth to the floor and he steps on it, a thing of the past. They’re held so tightly together that they are the same entity, his hands on her waist and hers in his hair, mapping stars and galaxies in their wake.

She pants and draws back, looking him in the eyes, and he supposes he looks something awful, disheveled and completely at her mercy. Then she returns to him, as she always will, legs entwined and her arms clutching his waist like a vice.

He is everywhere; he is at her neck, her collar. In her heart.

She is everywhere, too; she is blazing trails up his skin, making him shiver, grazing his chest over his uniform, undoing his hair from its ribbon and his resolve from his bones. From his heart.

Neither of them know what they’re doing.

They both let each other in.

He pulls back, his lips a breath from hers, and she shivers.

_“I’m sorry.”_

Silence. Then:

_“I know.”_

And just like that she is gone, petals underneath her shoes. He is left alone, grasping at his neck and trying to breathe in air that isn’t consumed with the scent of her honey perfume and forest fires.

———

Back to back.

Back to back. 

No. They turn, chest to chest, lips on lips, heart in bloody, swelling heart.

They’ve both fallen.

He still cannot shoot.

She can’t either, even though she knows how.

Ten counts, and they are still locked together, by handshake or by mouth. Nothing wavers.

———

She finds him at the end of the day, sun drowning in red and pink. They walk side by side, not acknowledging the horrible thing between them now.

Then she speaks, and her voice is a violin cry in the deafening void.

“I _am_ a bit of a liar.”

He turns to her. “What—?”

“I don’t think you’re a monster.”

He stops short. 

“I don’t—you’re human enough, Kieran. I don’t think I can say in good conscience that you aren’t” 

“So then—”

“But I don’t think I can forgive what you did.”

He sighs. “I know. I can’t either, Lauren.”

“You can’t give me an explanation?”

His palms are turned upward in supplication, blue coat sleeves grazing wrists that once held her neck. “I can’t. I lost myself. I _am_ a monster—you are a liar.”

“Don’t call me a liar if you want me to put up with you.”

“You’re a liar—but you’re not selfish.” He looks into her eyes, golden marks of topaz, expensive, priceless.

“You’re _not_ selfish.”

She turns to him, and they are face to face, heels drawn in, like two dancers on the stage, performing for an audience of silent, judgemental doves. 

Then, she holds out a hand. It’s empty; there’s no gun in it.

“Truce.”

He considers only for a moment.

“Truce, officer.”

They shake.

The clock chimes midnight.

They are two crows painted in the moonlight once more. 

They are the same.

———

They spar, and it is a fight of swans. They are all grace, beauty, and snapping teeth.

He keeps bringing knives to their gun fights.

He’s knocked against the floor, hard mat hitting harder countenance, and the steel pistol hits his neck with so much force he cuts open and begins to bleed crimson at the throat. Her legs are around his waist, his chin is underneath her gun, his heart is in her hands.

“Why are you letting me do this?”

He does not move. He is under her, in more ways than one.

“Why?”

Still he is silent, looking at her in the way he does when he thinks she can’t see; like she is something he can’t figure out, like she is an anomaly in the great chessboard of their office, the queen who can move in all directions with him.

Then, he takes the barrel in his palm and draws it closer, pulls it against him, like a lover’s caress, hard enough to create marks.

“You can do it.”

“What—?”

“You can hurt me. I’d let you.” He says it with finality, and it is not a lie, not a lie.

“But _why,_ Kieran?”

His eyes are a painting, a swirl of stars and night. He looks at her like she's the one thing he’s wanted for ages, and she supposes that _that_ is how it works. Why the bird falls for the trap.

“I cannot say.”

No. She cannot either.

———

Something changes.

She walks into the office and smiles instead of stiffens when she sees her favorite assassin.

Kym raises a brow, and Will’s hand on her shoulder wavers slightly. But she says nothing.

———

Once again he is back in the shooting gallery after hours, holding a reluctant revolver up to the target. 

He pulls the trigger, and it banks wide and hits the wall. A muffled curse is thrown into the night.

Then, she arrives, leaning against the doorframe in a direct parallel of all those nights ago.

“That’s not how you do it.”

He turns to her.

“Am I still too tense?”

Then, to his surprise, she walks forward and grabs another gun from the case on the wall. She comes to him and presents it, like a professor demonstrating to her willing student.

“You’re not factoring in recoil, that’s the thing.” She grips the pistol tightly, holds it steady. He notes the set of her shoulders, the curve of her arms as they move. The glint in her eyes as she falls into the familiar, comforting motion. 

“Spread your legs. Bend a little at the knees if you have to. Then—” 

A click. Bang. Bull’s eye, square and center.

“Ok, officer.” He smiles, and the moonlight is caught in his teeth, all swathed in blue ichor. She looks at him like she doesn't know what to make of it—but he supposes he must feel like that, too—she is all plaster cast in setting rays of the night.

He takes the gun from her, and does what she asked of him. He strikes. Hits the mark, if a little off center. 

“You learn quick.”

“I have a good teacher.”

———

They run at night, hand in hand, heart in heart, toe to toe.

Back to back, they fight together. Shoot simultaneously. Cut concurrently. The blood around them falls in perfect circles. Pomegranate seeds, raspberry pearls. 

They clutch at each other, and his is of desperation, hers of grief and pity. They give and take. Take and give. 

Back to back.

Back to back.

Lune again. The night always falls after day.

But they forget that he is still sick with the plague; the doctor does not leave.

And so they run.

Back to back.

———

“Breathe.”

They’re at it again, the targets marked with holes from his missed chances.

“You have to let it out.”

He grits his teeth. “I know.”

“If you know, then do it.”

One intake. Two. He fires and hits his mark.

“Thank you, _amour.”_

“Think nothing of it.”

———

She asks him what he wants, white gown flowing down her body in a room of black.

“I don’t _want_ anything.”

Every human being is a puzzle of need. That is what he knows.

She asks him what he needs, though she knows the answer. Daisies fall from her shoulders.

_You,_ he does not say.

She understands anyway, she must with the way she grips him tighter.

———

They walk into the office, arm in arm. Kym stares.

“Well—?”

Lauren shakes her head as their fingertips brush, and he heads off.

“He apologized.”

“I see.”

Later, when nobody is watching, a hyacinth drops in piles of white. It’s purple, the little thing.

_For you, darling._ He mouths. She rolls her eyes to hide the smile.

———

She has done it.

She has done the one thing she swore she wouldn’t do.

She let the cuckoo in. Turned a blind eye.

She taught him how to shoot.

———

They make a deal.

Back to back.

Ten paces away.

Square their shoulders.

Count to ten.

They turn at the same time, because they are the same being, the same breed, now.

They shoot.

Hers goes wide, into the dawn beyond.

His doesn’t. 

It strikes her in her heart. 

But she doesn’t fall.

Because he catches her.

And they go down together, because that is the way of the birds:

Nobody wins.

**Author's Note:**

> Multiple people have already done this and I am just adding to the fodder.
> 
> I reference ALL of my fics in this one (even some that aren’t out yet 👀) see if you can spot them all ;) Even the biggest one—if anyone caught it I’ll give you virtual cheesecake.
> 
> “Every human being is a puzzle of need”—from the movie Red Sparrow, the only line in the movie that is good
> 
> Kieran is in the absolute idiot! phase of his Simp metamorphosis here, enjoy watching him transform.
> 
> Yellow roses: apology, intense emotion, betrayal, undying love. White Irises: purity. White poppies: consolation. White carnations: sweet and lovely, faithful. White hyacinths: loveliness.
> 
> (Also lets appreciate that word count. I didn’t plan this ;;)
> 
> Comments/kudos are raspberries <3
> 
> Contact: artsofisha@gmail.com
> 
> -thumbipeach


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